I feel like there's a ton to get down, but no central theme. OK, let's start with the prompt: What changes are you observing in recreational patterns in your home neighborhood? (For the purposes of this exercise, consider dog-walking, jogging, outdoor exercise, outdoor gatherings, park usage, and the like as recreational.) How have these patterns …
Five Weeks In?
Something like that? Steady state here, although New York is still losing hundreds of residents a day. I suspect that at some point, it will hit me what that means, and I'll become unfunctional for a while. Still numb. I do think my ability to be empathetic about the death of large numbers of people I …
Pride & Joy
Fifteen years ago today, I wrapped up a seven-year run as the Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps concert band director - and, essentially, my thirties - with my final concert, Pride & Joy. It was a concert shamelessly stuffed with pieces I loved, many of which were part of my own personal musical history, (For instance, …
Solipsistic Nightmares
Vance prompts, "In addition to social distancing, the CDC is now advising the use of masks, in the form of simple cloth face coverings, as a means of slowing the spread of COVID-19. Are you now wearing masks when you visit places in which social distancing is difficult? What type of masks are you and …
Q2
Second quarter of the year. Still unemployed. The entire country is on lockdown. Where did I go wrong? Smart people are now recommending that you wear face coverings in public - not so much to keep you from getting sick, but to keep you from spreading it to others if you are sick. OK, that's not hard. Here are …
Smugpoints™
So we continue to plow onward, as our circle gets ever tighter. Suggestions for New Yorkers, particularly traveling elsewhere, get more and more prescriptive - self-quarantine for two weeks, for example. Rhode Island apparently is stopping NY plates at the border - first to turn them around, but now I think just to warn them. …
My Brilliant Career
As anyone who reads this probably knows, I spent my college days in a practice room, determined to be a professional French horn player. Mind you, I didn't have a very clear idea of what this looked like, I just knew I wanted to play horn and get paid for it. Problem is, once it …
Foiled!
Vance has posted a list of proposed core essays to consider and use as writing prompts for the #MOC19 project. I'll pick some up if I am uninspired. But today is not that day. So as you know, C and I are in New York City, the current epicenter of the virus in the US. …
Mass Observation: COVID-19
Wanting to give the students in his now-postponed writing classes some impetus to keep writing, and through research, discovering the World-War-II-era Mass Observation project, my college roommate Vance has started up a new writing project for the Time of Coronavirus: Mass Observation: COVID-19 Basically, if you're a blogger and you're writing anything about your personal …
Oh, goodie, another week of this
Probably scattershot, I'm not drafting this. Over 10,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in New York City now, 100 deaths. I had to consult Alexa to do the math, but that's very approximately a tenth of a percent of the population diagnosed, with one percent of that killed. We are now the hotspot for the disease …
The Toast Point Page 